Politics, parenting and other prattlings.

June 04, 2006

God help me, I'm pro-choice, but THIS stupid bitch ...

... confirms every snarky stereotype the pro-life side of aisle tosses around. Get out the cheese and crackers, friends, here's a case of whine:

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

See, that's her first problem. Bush wasn't there to insert her diaphram for her.

Dana then goes on to recount the horror, horror I tell you of trying to track down a Plan B prescription. Her own doctor doesn't give one (she wonders darkly about his motives and, of course, none of them would be legitimate to her anyways because, you know, since it all goes back to Boooooosh). The 72-hour clock for popping those Morning After pills is tick, tick, ticking away. How much time does our heroine spend looking for this holy grail, now out of reach due to an evil conservative plot? This is Friday, she makes three phone calls.

Three.

What's that, about 30 minutes out of one's day? Now, don't tell me that Dana wouldn't have spent most of Friday evening and Saturday to track down the perfect pair of shoes for a Sunday cocktail party. But why should she bother to put any more effort in getting a prescription to prevent a possible pregnancy than she used in making sure she practiced "safe sex?" Using the same exquisite decision-making powers, our heroine engages in a little fantasy

I figured I'd take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I'm 42. Isn't it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn't believe it.

No shit, Sherlock? I mean, you actually have unprotected sex and you got pregnant? Wow. What.are.the.odds? But hey, sister, don't let that make you wake up and take responsibility. There is always someone else to blame.

I felt sick. Although I've always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

Wait ... did I just hear horses screaming?

My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story.

Hmmmm. Finally something outside of shoe buying actually keeps her attention for more than 30 minutes.

the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern -- valid or not -- wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband.

Yes. Fuck those girls under 16 who are having sex, consenting or not, and THEIR health. Fuck it, if Plan B can be used by adult males in the exploitation of minor females. DANA MUST NOT BE INCONVENIENCED.

She then spends the second half of her whine recounting the "difficulty" in getting an abortion.

Calling doctors, I felt like a pariah when I asked whether they provided termination services. Finally, I decided to check the Planned Parenthood Web site to see whether its clinics performed abortions. [...] The hidden world of abortion services soon became even more subterranean.

Using the phone made her feel icky (the yellow pages are chock full of abortion providers), she gets info off the internet from the PP site and the world of abortion is hidden?. God help Dana's employer if she's incharge of any kind of filing or record keeping.

I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

Let's leave aside Dana's problems with the US Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion and freedom of speech -- it made her feel bad (don't you just wonder if Dana's feelings about evil religious people extends to the abolitionist movement or Dr. Martin Luther King?) If she didn't want to conceive, she should have inserted her diaphram.

Or better, since she says her family is completed and she desires no more children, why didn't she have her tubes tied?

Not since the creepy twat who "selectively aborted" two of her triplets because she didn't want to buy a mini-van and shop at Costco have I become so annoyed at such a shallow, irresponsible, deluded excuse for a woman blaming others for her choice in getting an abortion. She piled one irresponsibility upon the next and never once owns her own actions in her pity party.

Dana sings in one note -- me me me me me.

Sister, I won't take away your right to obtain an abortion. But grow up, BE a woman and own your own role in your immorality play.

Forget the fact that nothing in her story souned especially convenient. We’re living in interesting times when wanting to have sex with your husband and also wanting to remain un-pregnant is “selfish.”

Ah, the vagaries of youth compounded with a political faith that is, at best, morally confused. Dana faked reality and then shotguns everyone around her with blame. She gives less consideration in taking even the most minimal of steps to avoid pregnancy than she would to choosing a manicurist ... Yes, we live in interesting times when an allegedly adult female in her 40's has no clue that sex may cause pregnancy THEN believes when a perfect solution isn't delivered to her within 30 minutes like delicate slivers of sashimi on a translucent porcelain plate, it's all the fault of those icky religious people.

Dana is now claiming her three phones calls "panicked" her into idiocy

Myersville, Md.: Thanks for the honest article. Does Planned Parenthood distribute Plan B in Virginia or is it only available through MD offices? If not, is it because of Virginia's state laws regarding the distribution of birth control?

Don't hire THIS female for any legal work! What would happen to a brief if she found her hairdresser had cancelled her appointment. Whooeee!

Posted by Darleen at June 4, 2006 03:22 PM

Comments

*clap* *clap* *clap*

Stick a fork in the bitch, she's done!

That article has to be the most ridiculous, ignorant, self-indulgent pile of bullshit I've read in a loooong time. You might expect to hear that tripe from a teenager, but a married mother in her 40's? You're right, she does fit the stereotype perfectly.

BS on that one JPE. If she'd bothered to call the same PP clinic on that Friday, she would have been able to get an appointment and a prescription for Plan B by the afternoon.

She's just a lazy whiny idiot who didn't take responsibility for her actions, and now chooses to blame everyone else but herself. There are any number of times when she could have done something to prevent having to make this choice, from the moment when she chose not to purchase condoms for inconvenient moments to the Friday afternoon when she chose not follow up on Plan B.

Or she could have chosen to have the child, what a revolutionary concept.

Furthermore, we ask our teenagers to be responsible about sex and choices. We tell them to carry condoms and discuss options with their partners. So why should this chick get off scot-free on the subject just because she's married and in her 40's?

Using the phone made her feel icky (the yellow pages are chock full of abortion providers)

This shakes loose a memory. Up until college, I was of a "safe, legal, and rare" mentality. Then, one day, I was flipping through the phonebook and came across five or six pages of quarter and half-page ads for abortion services. Many advertised themselves as taking Visa and Mastercard. That was a real shock to my system. It was so commercialized, a business, An industry. You could kill your baby, and have it show up as nothing more than a line on your Visa bill.

I am pro choice, pro plan B and disgusted by this woman. I get that she had unprotected sex and had second thoughts about the consequences - if that had been me I would have called all over the United States, gone on line to order Plan B. Called my gyno for a script for the equivalant of Plan B.

She's just a moron. I hate women like this. She makes all of us on the pro-choice side look bad. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

And just where was oral contraceptives EVER available over-the-counter and icky religious people made them "take it back?" Get over the "Bush keeps Plan B prescription only so I had NO CHOICE about an abortion" perfidy.

You can't get Vicodin over the counter so I suppose if you're in great pain Bush would be responsible for you having NO CHOICE but to go out and score some heroin leading to your arrest?

You're welcome to search my archives and find any statement I make that shows I'm for legally banning abortion.

Or is that what being considered an authentic pro-choicer is now a days - no criticism of any silly twat like Dana who can't be trusted to insert her own diaphram without blaming Bush and wanting religious people "disallowed" from American politics.

One more time, VMC, the essential Dana is not about the politics...it's about the VALUES, stupid.

The point is, to say that "if Plan B isn't available over-the-counter I can't get it on Friday afternoon" is false. To say "if I have unprotected sex, and fail to get a scrip for Plan B in a timely fashion and then find out I'm pregnant and then get an abortion I can then blame Bush for that abortion" is also false.

Plan B is an abortifacient, in the sense that it prevents implantation. Not only is Darleen correct in that its ready availablity will give men more opportunties to exploit girls--it's a powerful drug that underage women should get a scrip for.

AG, a woman is not pregnant before a fertilized egg implants in her uterus. Even if Plan B sometimes prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg (and there is no evidence that it does, but rather its mechanism of action has been shown to be the prevention of ovulation), it still would not be causing an abortion. And for Pete's sake, birth control has been available in many forms for ages. It's not the limiting factor in the exploitation of young women - the limiting factor is power, where young women don't have it and older men do.

It's not the limiting factor in the exploitation of young women - the limiting factor is power, where young women don't have it and older men do.

Are we talking the power of age? Because there are a lot of adult women exploiting underage men, too. But the minor males don't get pregnant and many times they won't report it.

Oral contraceptives haven't been made OTC for many HEALTH reasons and the effect on girls 16 and younger has not been conclusively examined. Plus the delay over making Plan B OTC has concerned keeping it OUT of the hands of those under 17 due to the unknown health risks.

Make it OTC but behind a pharmacists counter so a woman has to be "carded" just like she were buying a bottle of wine.

However, the crux of my annoyance with Dana the dilettante is her complete lack of moral responsibility and her shallowness.

For heaven's sake, she's in her 40's! How many times, over and over and over, ad nauseum, in schools, in homes, on MTV, do we tell young people to pause in their passion and take precautions?

On baby Jill's thread there was even idiocy from some commenter "Tech"something blaming US health care for not "educating" Americans about sex/birth control.

What a friggin' stupid statement...but just more of the Leftcult victimology that victims never are to blame for anything.

"The point is, to say that "if Plan B isn't available over-the-counter I can't get it on Friday afternoon" is false."

But that is exactly what happened, is it not? Had the drug been available over the counter, she would have had it on Friday, right?

Why are people asking for it over the counter in the first place? In order to get it in a timely fashion. Why? Because the sooner it is taken after unprotected sex, the more effective it is.

And yes, Bush is entirely responsible for the fact that a 42-year-old woman found it difficult to obtain Plan B. Had she lived in California, she would have had it.

Did she do everything right? No. She should have called Planned Parenthood, by her own admission.
She should have fired her OB on the fucking spot and found another immediately. She should have known beforehand that her ignorant sawbones was going to pull a bait and switch on her because she would have asked right up front whether he was a full service gynecologist or not. But we are not always up on the proclivities and biases of our docs, are we? Normally, when you go to a doc, you imagine they will provide service to you when you need it.

And Plan B is not an abortifacient, unless you consider every female oral contraceptive pill an abortifacient. Plan B, a synthetic progesterone, acts in the very same fashion as every other pill. It will prevent ovulation, inhibit sperm transport by thickening and toughening cervical mucus, and possibly provoke changes in the endometrium that will inhibit implantation.

These three modes of action are the same for every single birth control pill on the market today. Look it up yourself. Search "phamacodynamics" with any commercially available female hormonal contraceptive and read what the circulars say.

I have addressed Dana's imperfect response over at Sara's blog as has Sara. Dana admits she did not think to call PPA when she was looking for Plan B. So yeah, she shoulda thunk. Ever made a mistake, Darlene? Maybe after the fact it occured to you that you might well have done something different and smarter?

None of this takes away from the fact that she should have been able to obtain the meds over the counter, and would have been were it not for Bush and his appointees at the FDA who personally overruled every scientific recommendation they received and continue to stall sales OTC.

Regarding molestation somehow being tied to EC sales over the counter: I don't buy it. Molesters are not the sort of people who care what happens to the girl, are they? But, since several states allow over the counter sales, it should be pretty easy to match up increased incidence of molestation and statutory rape in those states.

What we do have, however, is a pattern of stalling on the part of the FDA by Bush appointed commissioners, evidence that Mark Mcclellan, the earlier commissioner, discussed the OTC proposal with Jay Lefkovitz, White House Deputy for Domestic Policy. Evidence that Lester Crawford, the harried veterinarian, short-circuited the approval through direct intervention with both Janet Woodcock and Steven Galson. The timeline is an embarrassing indictment of the FDA, whose role is to determine the safety and effectiveness of medicine for sale in this country, not to enforce to the sexual mores of religious zealots and Republican theocrats through sleight-of-hand perversions of science.

But, as I've raised my own girls, I own my mistakes and don't immediately blame the weather, the stars or anyone in proximatey.

None of this takes away from the fact that she should have been able to obtain the meds over the counter

Why? Why does the fact that it is STILL a prescription medication have any thing to do with her refusal to take responsibility for her actions?

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

STOP with the fantastical way of dealing with things and come back to reality. For Dana or anyone else to blame their own inability to realize sex can result in conception does not constitute a national emergency to spoonfeed the meds of the idiots choice.

Good god, Dana and her supporters remind me of the assholes my daughter (paramedic) has to deal with who believe an ambulance is a private taxi .. WITH no intention of EVERY paying for their ride. The ambulance is "their right".

I'll withdraw my referring to Plan B as "an abortifacient" if you'll take a look at this for a moment:

"And yes, Bush is entirely responsible for the fact that a 42-year-old woman found it difficult to obtain Plan B. Had she lived in California, she would have had it."

The nation Bush is President of includes California. And (unlike the situation WRT medical marijuana here in the Golden State) the Feds are not imposing their will upon us in that regard. So the obstacles you refer to in the FDA are clearly not insurmountable.

As for the FDA--well, it never goes at the speed we'd like it to. Too fast, too slow. Never just right. But some of us do remember the deaths from the Dalkan Shield, so sometimes slow is good.

I just can't get over Dana, however. Not resourceful enough to get the scrip on the day she needed it? A twenty-something . . . okay. A thirty-something . . . well, that's a big fuck-up, but all right. A forty-something who can't take care of business? She's a head case.

Dana acknowledged her mistake. But her mistake did not happen in a void. It happened during a time when Bush Republicans are in control of the wheels of governance. The whole point of the article was the availability of EC, right?

It was not available to Dana when she needed it. It would have been, had she just remembered to call PPA, but she already said that she did not think to do this, as I said before. She blew that.

As an aside, how many times have you thought about what you were getting yourself into when you combed the yellow pages for a doctor? Are you accustomed to doing so? If you were in her shoes, what would you have done? I know what a lot of women and men do, they bet on luck.

Ever rely on luck? I think Dana weighed her predicament against the fact that she is 42 years old and lost the bet.

It cost her a surgical abortion.

That surgical abortion did not occur in a void, as I explained earlier. It could have been prevented if she had not fucked her husband without her diaphragm, and it could have been prevented if her doctor had simply written her a script for Plan B, or it could have been prevented if it had occurred to her to contact PPA immediately or it could have been prevented if she had just continued to pick a number out of the phonebook and kept on calling or it could have been prevented if Mark McClellan and Lester Crawford had done their fucking jobs and behaved like scientists instead of cowards.

Now, you may educate yourself on the political and scientific ins-'n-outs of the shenanigans at the FDA or not. You have not made one substantive comment in that regard so far, not one comment to even show that you are aware of anything that is going on in the real world short of your adoration for Bush and ugly, unreasoned, contempt for Dana L. It would help if you would read up some.

Now, as to her goddamned prick doc, this: He is a disgrace to medicine. Whether through cowardice, the most likely scenario (I do not want to provide a controversial service in Pat Robertson's home state!) or through religious conviction (Jesus will kill me if I prescribe Plan B!) or through avarice (If my right-wing patients find out that I write prescriptions for Plan B, I'll be out of business!) I do not care. It is not the job of the patient to elicit from the physician the fact that he will not perform crucial elements of customary practice. It is his responsibility to make it very plain to every person for whom he provides service that that he will not perform abortions, provide contraception, including emergency contraception, which is the same goddamned thing as regular hormonal contraception at a different dosage, and any other weird thing that he will otherwise spring on you through the good offices of his secretary on a Friday afternoon while he is already on his way to the goddamned golf course.

I'll read up on the FDA's actions WRT EC if you'll take back your charge that I "adore" Bush--particularly since he makes me mad a lot of the time.

You know: when I was a kid we didn't have emergency contraception: we went to the clinic, and took our chances. If we were careless or lucky, we had to back to the clinic again. Walking uphill both ways . . .

My "contempt" of Dana is very reasoned. She was living in a fantasy from the moment she decided that three phone calls were too tough to followup. She was living in a fantasy world where she alleges she "looked on the Internet" but was unaware that PP could give her Plan B. She was living in a fantasy when she EXPECTED Plan B to be OTC when it wasn't, hadn't ever been. She lives in her own little world where she can't be bothered with the health of other women if it inconveniences HER.

AG was right to point to the Dalkon Shield. I'd add toxic shock syndrome and replacement hormone therapy for menopausal women.

Don't know about you, but don't you find using women as beta testers for medical therapy kind of...you know ... contemptuous? How many deaths from RU486 are you willing to ignore because of political pressure? It was 12 deaths before the Dalkon Shield was pulled... we are at 6 and counting for RU486.

For almost 40 years now oral contraceptives have been, and remain, by prescription only. Someone in their 40s is missing a vital section of their brain to think differently.

Also, I really think your claim that Plan B is not an abortifacient is as irrelevant as it is wrong. The hormones in Plan B can work three ways... prevent ovulation, interfere in conception and interfere in implantation. If it ONLY worked in preventing ovulation then it would be less effective. It is irrelevant because I'm dealing primarily with Dana's lack of moral character. She engages in an egregious variation on the theme "the dog ate my homework."

And your anger at her doctor is misplaced. Commercial relationships are voluntary. What services a doctor wishes to offer is his/her sole decision. Dana is free to seek medical care elsewheres.

And your little snark about rightwing Republicans fails to understand there are a lot of pro-life Democrats as there is pro-choice Republicans.

This is about the values..even as much as you think it is about politics and Bush should have personally foreseen Dana's stupidity.

Oh, and hey, check this out: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/fact-041217-refusal-reproductive.xml
Just above the title 'Contraception Refusals by Hospitals', there's a cool little deet that looks like so-Although the total number of pharmacist refusal incidents is unknown, reports of pharmacist refusal date back to 1991 (Cantor & Baum, 2004).
So pharmacists could refuse to dole out contraceptives before Bush stole the 2000 elections...
He must have a time machine. There is no other logical explantation.

Also, I use "fantasy land" as synonomous with the phrase "faking reality." Dana, a career woman in her 40's already with two kids engaged in faking reality that unprotected sex might not lead to pregnancy and, thus, she didn't have to pursue any actions beyond the three phone call rule.

It's also called wishful thinking.

Let's change this. If Dana had spent the better part of six months eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at MacDonalds, downing 5-10,000 calories a day, and then wrote for the WaPo she was "surprised" she was now fat, how would you feel if she blamed McDonalds, not herself? What if she then wrote about how awful it was that she wasn't provided OTC the latest diet pills, jaw-wiring and liposuction and blamed it on icky health fanatics who believe in balanced food intake and exercise?

No where have I said that Dana should be denied the opportunity to seek an abortion. But she is solely responsible for every action that brought her to that choice AND she is solely responsible for making the choice of having an abortion.

John is just trying to point out some obvious facts: 1) all Republicans are against abortion; 2) all those who oppose abortion also oppose birth control; 3) all those who oppose birth control and abortion also advocate killing those who provide abortion services.

If you don't want to be corrected, try to make your assertions less sweeping.

Your McDonald's analogy doesn't do much. Aside from the obvious fact that six months of repeated behavior is hardly analogous to one day of irresponsibility and unwise choices, how I personally would feel about such a person is irrelevant. Her abortion had two causes in this situation. One was her irresponsibility, the second was a combination of various governmental policies regarding Plan B. You choose to focus on the former and exclude the latter for your own political reasons, and she does the opposite for her own political reasons.

If a doctor contracts to provide certain services, he/she cannot arbitrarily pick and choose not to deliver on the contract. But from the outset, if a doctor doesn't, hasn't and won't provide specific services under any contract, that IS their right. IE An OB/GYN is under no obligation to perform an abortion if they have never performed abortions. And a doctor can withdraw services..as with the deaths from RU486 many doctors no longer will use that as chemical abortion.

The availability of Plan B didn't have a damned thing to do with Dana's stupidity. It has never been OTC and trying to fake reality of "well, what IF it was available OTC" is the height of the arrogance of victim mentality.

The availability of Plan B didn't have a damned thing to do with Dana's stupidity.

Correct but irrelevant. The availability of Plan B had no effect on her choice not to use contraception, but it did have an effect on her choice to have an abortion. Events usually have more than one but-for cause. A simple point that you appear unable or unwilling to acknowledge if it hinders your ability to rant about stupid libruls with BDS.

The interesting thing is that I think either Darleen or I would be just fine with Plan B being sold OTC, if some safeguards were in effect for underage girls. We have slightly different angles on the issue (e.g., Darleen and I have had some spectacular fights about parental consent laws).

But this idea of BC pills OTC as a sort of birthright rubs us both the wrong way.